July 21, 2026 | Category: Published Articles

The Forgotten Infrastructure Canada Needs Most
By: Lindsay Kislock

Canada's productivity problem is well-known. While governments debate innovation, investment, and trade diversification, one essential piece is often overlooked: the infrastructure that efficiently moves people, goods, and businesses across the country.

Canada needs a new National Highway Strategy.

The Trans-Canada Highway remains one of Canada's great nation-building achievements. Established by the Trans-Canada Highway Act of 1949, it was designed to connect provinces through the shortest practical east-west route, strengthening national unity, economic development and mobility across one of the world's largest countries.

More than 75 years later, Canada faces another nation-building challenge: reversing decades of weak productivity growth while doubling exports to markets beyond the United States. Meeting that ambition will require more than trade agreements or regulatory reform. It will require modern economic corridors anchored by a strong National Highway System. The Western Premiers recently described highways as the "backbone" of Canada's economic corridors and called for sustained federal investment to strengthen them.

Canada has lagged behind many of its competitors in productivity for decades. Weak productivity means slower wage growth, lower business investment and reduced competitiveness. At the same time, Canada's dependence on the U.S. market leaves the economy increasingly vulnerable. If Canada is serious about diversifying trade, it must first make it easier to move goods east and west.

This is why the role of highways is so crucial.

Policymakers discuss interprovincial trade as though the challenge is primarily regulatory. Removing internal trade barriers is important, but businesses will still struggle if freight moves through congested corridors, deteriorating highways and unreliable connections between provinces, ports, airports, border crossings and intermodal hubs.

A more productive economy requires a more connected one. The report from the recent Western Premiers meeting defines economic corridors as far more than transportation routes. They are integrated systems of highways, railways, ports, airports, energy infrastructure and digital networks that reduce transportation costs, improve trade fluidity and stimulate economic growth.

Yet Canada remains one of the few developed countries without a modern national highway policy or a dedicated long-term federal program for major highway corridors. While countries such as the United States, Germany and Australia recognize national highways as strategic economic infrastructure, Canada continues to treat them largely as provincial responsibilities.

These shortfalls are no longer hypothetical; their consequences are becoming increasingly apparent.

The Western Premiers estimate that maintaining and expanding Western Canada's transportation corridor system alone will require between $60 billion and $69 billion annually over the next fifty years, simply to keep pace with population growth, economic activity and trade demand. Importantly, that estimate only reflects baseline investment—it does not include today's infrastructure deficit or the additional capacity needed to support future supply chain expansion.

A modern National Highway Strategy would reduce transportation costs, improve supply chain reliability, strengthen interprovincial commerce, connect resource and manufacturing regions more efficiently and improve access to global markets through Canada's ports.

The original Trans-Canada Highway succeeded because it was built through a federal-provincial partnership. That same model should guide Canada today. Ottawa does not need to own every highway or dictate every project. But it should provide national leadership by partnering with provinces to identify strategic trade corridors, complete missing highway links, modernize aging infrastructure and eliminate bottlenecks that constrain economic growth.

One priority should be obvious. The Western Premiers have unanimously called for completing the twinning of the Trans-Canada Highway from the Manitoba-Ontario border to the Pacific Coast, describing it as essential to Canada's goal of doubling exports beyond the United States while improving safety, reliability and freight movement.

This is not simply a transportation issue. It is an economic competitiveness issue.

If Canada wants to diversify trade, increase productivity and build a more resilient economy, it needs reliable east-west corridors that connect producers with ports and global markets. Highways are the physical foundation that allows every other productivity policy to succeed.

Previous generations built the Trans-Canada Highway because they understood that transportation infrastructure was more than a public works project. It was a nation-building project.

Canada must launch and deliver a robust National Highway Strategy to secure our economic future. One that provides predictable and flexible long-term investments, establishing clear national priorities for trade-enabling corridors, modernize critical routes, address key bottlenecks and strengthen connections to ports, rail, terminals, airports, intermodal hubs and major industrial regions

It is time to prioritize action—the time for debate is over.